Arlington Arts PLACE Grant project with AHC, 2025

AHC’s residents in Green Valley–The Shelton, Fort Henry Gardens, and The Macedonian–felt their stories were being told by others.

They said they wanted to tell their own stories. They said they wanted to be heard.

Ms Gwen Day (left) resident of Fort Henry Gardens, discusses her story with Kori Johnson of the Studio PAUSE Team, at the Fort Henry Community Center, May 2025.

Me, Here,
& Green Valley: A City of Stories project

This project is supported in part by Arlington County through the Arlington Cultural Affairs division of Arlington Economic Development and the Arlington Commission for the Arts.

The PLACE Grant:

Here’s what the Arlington Arts FY2023 PLACE Grant is all about:

Our goal is to invest in a thriving and equitable arts community in Arlington by supporting Arlington-based artists and organizations from communities that face barriers to art services and resources.

This is a competitive grant program that supports community-initiated projects related to Arlington’s history, built environment, and/or cultural heritage that reinforce the goals of the Arts Commission and enhance Arlington’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Awarded grants are at the intersection of arts, culture, and heritage with the goal of providing arts opportunities to communities that have had less access to arts programming, education, and other art services. Arlington's historic communities are a critical priority for this funding.

Old Collaborators, New Project

In 2023, AHC was awarded a PLACE grant to work with Studio PAUSE to develop a mural project at The Shelton, an AHC property in Green Valley, a historically black neighborhood in south Arlington. That particular project was eventually cancelled and Arlington Arts Commission granted AHC an opportunity to use the original grant for a reconfigured project with Studio PAUSE.

Michael Swisher, who had recently joined AHC as Director of Community Engagement, had worked with Sushmita and Studio PAUSE in 2019 when they did the City of Stories project with Arlington Public School’s OST (Out of School Time) staff. For this new project, Michael was interested in how the residents at AHC properties relate to each other, across AHC communities, and to the larger communities and neighborhoods they live in. He approached Sushmita and the Studio team to come up with a meaningful project to explore this idea.

As they looked at recent versions of City of Stories, they noticed how it had merged with the Studio’s FY2024 exhibits, Me, Here: Stories of People & Place. A project combining City of Stories and Me, Here seemed to be what is needed, and Studio PAUSE founder artist Sushmita Mazumdar felt it was time for another City of Stories project!

The CITY OF STORIES project

City of Stories is an ongoing book arts project through which Sushmita and the PAUSErs help make community voices visible.

“Many people who come to my Studio hear stories from others, stories that they might not otherwise hear—stories of school life, immigration, education rights, language equality, family, incarcerated parents, and more. When we see each other’s stories expressed through art, it gives us the opportunity to understand in ways which go beyond words and language,” says Sushmita.

Sushmita has leveraged her most popular storybook—the one-page, origami 3D house-shaped book—through various versions, inviting groups to share their stories relating to the place they call home. These are then installed on a five-panel folding wooden frame, nearly six-foot tall, with wires going across each panel. Here, the dimensional books, formed into houses, are hung side-by-side, creating a city. Viewers can see, read, and experience the stories from both sides as they move around the panels.
The panels themselves are inspired by Asian folding screens but they also shift the idea of art as only being something framed and hung a wall.

Sushmita first created the City of Stories for the National Building Museum in Washington DC in 2018 for their event 1968: Shaping the District, which marked the 50th anniversary of this historic year. As an immigrant, Sushmita was interested in how people can learn the history of the new places that they call home.

Through this project, she invites us to think about “What Stories Will We Build Our City With?” Will it be stories of famous people? People from the past? Or celebrities? As the Studio encourages “everyday people” to share their stories through their art, we all get to learn about our community and how it was shaped.

The ME, HERE project

When Studio PAUSE opened its new location on Columbia Pike, Sushmita and the Studio team applied for two grants that could fund the work of artists and creatives at the new location. One was an individual artist’s grant for her to curate four community art exhibits for and by the residents of Barcroft Apartments. These exhibits would explore the idea of “Me, Here” and how we tell stories of people and place.

For the first opening exhibit at the Studio PAUSE Community Gallery, Sushmita invited people who were part of the PAUSE community to share how they tell stories of “Me, Here.” For the second opening exhibit on the Paula Endo & Lloyd Wolf Gallery for the Columbia Pike Documentary Project (CPDP), she delved through its archives to find what they had about Barcroft Apartments and the nearby area along Columbia Pike. These became the “Me, Here” stories as told by the photographers and interviewers for CPDP, of which she had been a part since 2018. Through the range of storytellers, artists, and media in these two exhibits, Sushmita wanted the residents of Barcroft Apartments to be inspired to tell their own stories in their own way. She hoped the exhibits would spark conversations and get juices flowing.

Combining the Two Projects

Since then, there had been another project that had taken “Me, Here” to a new place, Northern Virginia Community College’s AAPI Center, Annandale Campus. Sushmita created the Me, Here at NOVA and Elsewhere project, encouraging students to explore the stories of who they are at NOVA and who they are “Elsewhere” which could be at home, or in their country of origin, for example.

First, the students visited the Studio and got to hear the story of how Sushmita needed a space to do her own art in her own way, and so she had opened Studio PAUSE, and they got a tour of the two exhibits to see how others told their own stories of “Me, Here.” The students then made their own copies of the exhibit catalog–it would be their textbook!

Then Sushmita took the art supplies to NOVA and over the next few sessions the students made the 3D house-shaped books which told their stories of “Me, Here” at NOVA on one side, and of “Elsewhere” on the other side. When these books were displayed on the City of Stories installation, viewers could see all the NOVA stories on one side and all the Elsewhere stories together on the other side. This allows viewers to see how similar or different each student’s story was displayed, like a city of houses, each one unique with its own artwork and story.

The Storybooks from Green Valley

The 3-D house-shaped storybooks made by each participant are below. They met to first brainstorm stories and create the house-shaped book itself. They wrote their ideas and made their sketches on note paper. They then planned out how they would place it all in their book. Adults, teens, and children participated. Some wrote, and some wanted to not write. Some wrote in their own language. Some asked Sushmita to write down their story as they told her, and she did.

“Nothing should be a barrier, but often there are many barriers to why people don’t share their stories,” Sushmita says.

One side of the book is about their homes in the apartment building they lived in, and the other side is about Green Valley, the neighborhood their homes are in.

Installation & Display

The books will be displayed on the City of Stories frames at the newly established Green Valley Farmers Market on 3 Fridays.

August 8, August 22, and September 5, 2025

When displayed, one side will show all the “Me, Here” sides of the books: personal stories of each participant. The other side will show all the “And Green Valley” sides of the books where we see how the participants feel they fit in here, in this place which they call home. Here, we get to see how distinct each individual story is and yet how their stories as a whole form a unique community in which they all have something in common with each other, a space of shared history and community. This installation will allow viewers to find something unique yet universal in each handmade storybook.

At the events guests who live in Green Valley will be invited to write their responses to the City of Stories on display or add a post-it note response on the panel frames, if that is something they wish to do.

The final display for the project will be at Green Valley Day on September 20, 2025.

[photo coming soon…]